With high expectations going into the 4x100m final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo last month, the GB women’s relay team came in the worst place to finish, fourth. In their post-race interview with the BBC, the team reflected on their performance and the fact that they had done all they could by focusing on “controlling the controllables.”

Those who follow sport will have noticed the rise of this phrase in recent years, popularised in part by The Chimp Paradox by psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters. In my final years at GB Taekwondo before returning to property, Dr Peters was our in-house psychiatrist, and British Cycling’s.

The principle behind controlling the controllable is to recognise what lies within our power versus what lies beyond it, and to focus energy on the former. It sounds simple, but when pressure rises, emotion often overrides logic.

It can feel like there is little we can control as we face this perfect storm of rising construction costs, high interest rates, evolving regulations, and tightening lending conditions. When we find ourselves dwelling on the viability storm, it is time to step back and reframe our focus to influence what we can control.

There is still plenty within our grasp. We can control the selection of our team, the design of the product, the quality of the information we submit to key bodies, the engagement with stakeholders, and the plans we put in place to manage risk. We can also control how we lead, how we communicate, and how we act under pressure.

Controlling the controllable is not a new principle, but it is one we often need reminding of. In our last insight, we touched on leadership lessons from Ernest Shackleton (LEADERSHIP // The Boss's Playbook), who, when stranded with his crew in Antarctica facing near-certain death, understood the importance of control. Shackleton focused his men on routine, discipline, and teamwork, the elements they could control, while they waited for the uncontrollable weather to shift. The storm lasted longer than anyone could have imagined, but eventually, it passed, and his crew survived.

At the Building Future Conference a few weeks ago, the message from Andy Roe, Chief Executive of the Building Safety Regulator, carried the same sentiment. The current storm, including the backlog of projects waiting to clear Gateway 2, will also pass. Roe spoke about the need to regain control of a system that had lost its way, with Gateway 2 approvals currently taking close to a year. His focus was on structure, accountability, and pace; introducing batch reviews of applications, appointing dedicated account managers for major developers and regions, and overhauling the BSR’s digital systems to improve transparency and efficiency.

Roe’s message was clear: control what you can. By streamlining process, improving communication, and rebuilding trust between the regulator and the industry, he aims to bring certainty and momentum back into a system that has been stuck in the storm. The delays will ease, the backlog will clear, and the process will become smoother. The storm will pass, but it will pass faster for those who focus on what they can control.

The question for all of us is this: what are we doing now, with what we can control, to ensure we are ready when the storm does pass?

Until then, keep focusing on the controllable — and keep rowing.